Portrait of the Revolutionary as a Young Man
by rebecca-in-blue
Summary: "Perhaps that was why these other boys had chosen to pick on him. He was not only a newcomer, but a weakling, too." A one-shot from Enjolras's childhood.


There really isn't much to this story. A little plot-bunny just ran through my head, and since I don't usually write about Les Amis, I decided to try something different and chase it down. Hope y'all enjoy. Oh, and there's a reference in here that I'm curious to see if anyone catches.

(For my own reference: 88th fanfiction, 18th story for _Les Miserables_, 1st Enjolras-centric piece.)

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Victoire Enjolras could not have been more pleased with her family's new home. It was only about ten miles from their old house, but the difference was enormous. The new house was larger, and so was the garden, and it was in a much more genteel neighborhood of Paris. Her only concern about their new home was for her son. Pierre was only six, and to his child's mind, they might as well have moved to a different world. The new neighborhood was full of strange families. His new school was full of strange children. He didn't know a single one of them.

She wanted to cheer him up, so on his nanny's next day off, Victoire did something that she almost never did. She took Pierre on an outing herself, to a large park near their new home.

They heard the other little boys first, noisily shouting and laughing in their play, like all little boys do — all, it seemed, except Pierre, who had always been on the quiet, timid side. Then they turned round a bend in the path and saw them, a large group of boys about Pierre's age, playing at some rough-and-tumble game — crack-the-whip, it looked like — in a meadow. Pierre stopped in his tracks and just watched them for a moment, his eyes still and solemn.

Victoire was encouraged and relieved when he tugged on her skirts and asked, "Mama, those boys go to my school. May I go play with them?" He needed to make new friends. She smiled and said, "Yes, of course," and sat down on the nearest bench as he ran across the park.

She didn't mean to lose herself in the newspaper that she'd brought with her. She never actually read the news or kept up with current events, but she read the society columns religiously, and today's column reported that Madame Gigi Lachaille and her husband were spending a weekend seaside, at the resort at Trouville. The Lachailles were among the most bourgeois of Paris society, and they didn't live far from Victoire's new house. She'd been hoping to catch a glimpse of them. She read the column for some time before she thought to look up and check on Pierre.

Her heart skipped a beat when she saw, across the meadow, the pack of little boys encircling her son. Her first maternal instinct was to run right over and throttle the other boys by their necks. She even rose partly up from the bench to do so... but something stopped her. Something forced her to sit back down. _This is life_, she told herself, swallowing hard. _He must learn to fight his own battles_.

Victoire barely breathed as she sat on the bench and watched the taunting escalate. She was too far away to hear their words, but she saw the other boys curl their lips and laugh at Pierre, their cruel eyes narrowed. What were they saying to him? Perhaps they were teasing him for his fine, white-blonde curls, the ones that Victoire had always admired. She saw Pierre's eyes widen, his cheeks flush crimson.

Victoire wrung her hands helplessly, her heart breaking, but still, she forced herself to not intervene. She prayed to God to grant her son courage, to make him as strong as the stone that Victoire had named him for when she held him in her arms for the first time. He was a sickly baby right from the start, born early and underweight, and she'd chosen Pierre because she wanted him to grow to be as strong and steady as a rock. But he hadn't grown strong yet. His first years had been full of illnesses that would've killed a poor woman's child — Victoire thanked God that she and Bernard could afford the best doctors and medicines for him — and his health was still delicate. Perhaps that was why these other boys had chosen to pick on him, rather than let him join their game. He was not only a newcomer, but a weakling, too.

Soon, the inevitable pushing and shoving began — four other boys, most of them bigger and healthier than him, against Pierre. Victoire could scarcely believe what she saw next. Her sweet, delicate, mild-mannered little boy began fighting back. He kicked and punched so fiercely that the other boys backed down and walked away. Even from this distance, Victoire could see a passion burning in Pierre's eyes, as if someone had kindled a fire there, one that she had never seen before. She breathed a prayer of thanks when the fight was over, waited until the other boys were out of sight, and then, finally, she stood up from the bench and walked over to Pierre, calling his name cheerfully. She never mentioned the fight and acted as though she hadn't seen a thing.

Within a few days, those boys were Pierre's friends — but with one significant to them: they never again bullied a newcomer. Pierre had won their respect by fighting back against them even when he was so outnumbered. Within a week, he was playing crack-the-whip with them in that meadow in the park as if he'd known them all his life, and with him in it, their whip was bigger and stronger than before.

**FIN**


End file.
